Tag: dbj

Colorado Tech Weekly brings you the top 10 technology stories of the past week and the best upcoming local tech events every Monday morning!

Last weekend Andy Vuong with the Denver Post pointed out a seemingly unfair tax on Denver’s web and app developers. Then I read this article “Do You Believe in LIfe After Startups?” that says all this excitement over startups, accelerators and VCs could just be a bubble priming to burst. Then after that my alternator goes out on my car making me question whether maintaining my car is more expensive than buying a new one. Things were not looking so bright.

But then Greg Avery with the Denver Business Journal put Vuong’s article in some context that Denver’s tax is more old than bad. I realized the startup “bubble” is tempered by the fact that good, experienced VCs and developers won’t fall for bad projects more than once… or twice. And my car? It’s fixed now. I’m also looking for some part-time work so I can get a new car.

If it was always unicorns and rainbows, then we wouldn’t need innovators and disrupters. We wouldn’t need to fail faster or be more agile or lean. Sometimes we need to celebrate these as the opportunities they are.

Top Colorado Technology News

Denver’s tax on web and app development draws ire from software execs [DenverPost]

New open source starter kit, from Denver-based AppIt Ventures, saves developers a week of time [BuiltinColorado]

Fort Collins-based Bulb raises $1M in Series A funding from angels, prepares for launch of first major digital product [InnovatioNews]

My goal is to have a software/web/app development job by 2016, so one year ago yesterday I started Colorado Tech Weekly to keep myself up-to-date on what was happening in the technology community in Colorado. I turned it into a blog because I knew that if I wanted to know what was going on, so did a lot of other people. This happens to be a theme within the Colorado tech community. Don’t just help yourself, help everyone else!

5 things I’ve learned in no particular order

Startups are noisy – I mean this in the nicest way possible. They’re launching, acquiring more funding, announcing exciting partnerships, filing for IPOs, getting acquired by larger companies and generally creating a ton of buzz. A lot of our startups are tech startups and it’s fun and easy to get caught up in the excitement!

There is no shortage of helpful people – The people and companies that make up the Colorado tech community are a helpful bunch. If you can think of a programming language, a framework or a discipline, there is probably a Meetup group here to help you learn about it. Speaking of Meetup groups…

There is no shortage of fun, helpful events – If I went to every tech related event just in the Denver area, I would be constantly busy. Between monthly group meetups, startup weeks, hackathons and conferences I wouldn’t have any time to do anything else!

Twitter may not be the best way to keep track of all the tech people in Colorado – I thought I would be clever and follow every person and company related to the Colorado tech industry. I didn’t anticipate that my Colorado Tech list would end up topping 1500 accounts. I also didn’t anticipate that Twitter would only allow me to follow 2001 accounts. Argh!

I can’t get over the “community” part of the Colorado tech community – Startups are growing and multiplying like rabbits. Large companies are celebrating big projects. There is such a great atmosphere of cooperation and encouragement! Companies, groups and experienced designers and developers are more than willing to help each other, their neighborhoods and newbies to the profession. It’s amazing!

Numbers:

My site receives around 200 visits per month. About 100 of those come from Colorado

Top 5 most mentioned companies:

Where do I go from here?

Next week I am going to start a 2nd news series: Dev News Weekly. It will focus on national news for developers. It will probably focus on web development as that’s where my focus has been.

I will start posting at least 1 opinion post per month.

I will be better at posting project updates. Half the reason I started my CTW posts was to drive smart people like you to my site so you can see what cool things I am up to.

Thanks a ton for reading! I keep trying to tell myself that I write these blog posts for my benefit and it’s just an extra bonus that other people might read them but it’s really nice to know people do read them.

Colorado Tech Weekly brings you the top 10 technology stories of the past week and the best upcoming local tech events every Monday morning!

There are 52 weeks in a year. This is my 52nd CTW post, so it makes sense that I’ve been at this for a year straight! But when I look back, CTW #1 was posted on June 16, 2013 so I’m feeling a bit off. I’ll dance to a year of consistency anyway because I can!

June must be a good time to start covering technology and innovation in Colorado. Congrats to one of my favorite news sources, InnovatioNews, on their 2 year anniversary! I hope I’m always a year behind you.

Colorado Tech Weekly brings you the top 10 technology stories of the past week and the best upcoming local tech events every Monday morning!

I work full-time as an emergency dispatcher, so the Airlife app story got me super excited! There needs to be more out-of-the-box thinking when it comes to technology and emergency services. If only there was some sort of event where creative minds got together to try to improve government services in Colorado…. OH WAIT! Hack4Colorado is this weekend!

If you are planning on participating in Hack4Colorado and you want some cool public safety ideas, let me know. I’ll give you all sorts of ideas. Unfortunately I can’t be there. I’ll be staying up all night waiting for 911 calls instead.

Top Colorado Technology News

Boulder-based Uvize determined to help veterans make transition to college life [Xconomy]

Colorado Tech Weekly brings you the top 10 technology stories of the past week and the best upcoming local tech events every Monday morning!

There is a LOT of good news bouncing around this square state and I have a feeling with Boulder Startup Week just wrapping up, Aspen’s and Fort Collins’ Startup Weeks just about to start and Denver Startup Week not too far away that the good news is gonna keep coming. Is there a Startup Week in southern Colorado? There should be.

Also I recently just found out how cool Evernote is. It’s especially cool for a blog like this one. If you have any tips on how to make the best of Evernote, please pass them along. Thanks!

Colorado Tech Weekly brings you the top 10 technology stories of the past week and the best upcoming local tech events every Monday morning!

If you use the internet, create things for the internet or just giggle at Lolcats on the internet in Colorado there are some things going on at the state and federal level that you should be aware of. Andy Vuong’s TechKnowBytes post about Level 3 is a good place to start if you are concerned about what FCC director Tom Wheeler has proposed in regards to net neutrality (You should be concerned). Meanwhile the Denver Business Journal article about telecom reform is great news for the expanse of high-speed internet in Colorado. Happy Monday!

Colorado Tech Weekly brings you the top 10 technology stories of the past week and the best upcoming local tech events every Monday morning!

I almost made it without mentioning the Heartbleed bug, but when I saw that Denver-based Accuvant released a paper with recommendations for it, I had to include it. This week, if you talk about technology, you’ll talk about Heartbleed. If you talk about technology in Colorado, you’ll talk about startups. And if you talk about startups in Colorado you will talk about beer. There, I feel I’ve justified my title to this post now.

Colorado Tech Weekly brings you the top 10 technology stories of the past week and the best upcoming local tech events every Monday morning!

The number 42 always inspires Douglas Adams puns from me, For the life of me I can’t figure out why I missed out on such a great pun opportunity last week. I suppose I was too nervous about the Hour of Hardware event I was running at my daughter’s elementary school. It went great! The kids seemed to have a great time and the computers we used all worked after all the students left. You can read my review of the event here.

The news I read about the tech industry inspires and motivates me and it’s nice to pass that inspiration on to others.

Colorado Tech Weekly brings you the top 10 technology stories of the past week and the best upcoming local tech events every Monday morning!

Last week I wrapped up my journey into UX Design. I didn’t finish my journey, I just wrapped it up for now. It’s a much bigger subject than I realized and I have a new respect for those that do it as a profession. On Wednesday, I picked up the Ruby on Rails Tutorial book. I spent all day Sunday troubleshooting tools that I only halfway understand so I could learn and develop with Ruby on Rails. Self-directed learning is a lot like the TARDIS, it doesn’t always take me where I mean to go, but it takes me to where I need to be.

I hope you check out Open World Learning’s request for volunteers. Few things are more fun than helping kids get excited about technology. I will get to do just that tomorrow as I am hosting a Hour of Hardware event at my daughter’s elementary school to compliment the Hour of Code event we hosted in the fall. Wish me luck!

Colorado Tech Weekly brings you the top 10 technology stories of the past week and the best upcoming local tech events every Monday morning!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! May you get all your wishes but one so you always have something to strive for!

I am working on redesigning my website to create a better resource for you as well as learn about the design process. You can help out by taking this 23 question user survey. I greatly appreciate your help!

Thank you for reading!

If you know of any other good news stories or sources about tech in Colorado, please let me know! Also if you attend any of the events listed, I would love to hear from you!

I have a break in my courses at Regis University. I am using that time to work on my own projects. During this break I am focusing on learning UX design and how to implement it with my website. You can find all my updates on my website design project here.